From then on Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, and other leading officials, such as Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov were considerably weakened.

With the death of Stalin in early March 1953, Russian support for a Chinese hard-line weakened and China decided to compromise on the prisoner issue.

Stalin took several measures in persecuting the Armenian Church, already weakened by the Armenian Genocide and the Russification policies of the Russian Empire.

Consequently, during one of the many purges of artists and intellectuals that Joseph Stalin conducted during the early years of his rule, Bakhtin was sentenced to exile in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state, it would kill him.

Some claim that without the uprising, Poland would have become an Soviet republic, whilst others claim that the uprising itself was the mistake which enabled Joseph Stalin to arrange for his enemies to destroy his inconvenient allies and left Poland fatally weakened.

`` Behind that Charlie Chaplin moustache and that truant lock of hair that always covered his forehead, behind the tirades and the sulky silences, the passionate orations and the occasional dull evasive stare, behind the prejudices, the cynicism, the total amorality of behavior, behind even the tendency to great strategic mistakes, there lay a statesman of no mean qualities: Shrewd, calculating, in many ways realistic, endowed -- like Stalin -- with considerable powers of dissimulation, capable of playing his cards very close to his chest when he so desired, yet bold and resolute in his decisions, and possessing one gift Stalin did not possess: The ability to rouse men to fever pitch of personal devotion and enthusiasm by the power of the spoken word ''.

Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens ' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers.

The three powers were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, and, later, Clement Attlee and President Harry S. Truman.

However, Alexander's policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed that the nations in league with the Axis powers would be divided into territories to be controlled by the USSR, the U. S., and the UK.

Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow Trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet military was not yet at a level of readiness suitable for winning a war: Joseph Stalin had said in 1931 that Soviet industry was " 50 to 100 years behind " the Western powers.

Aid by Russia to the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese revolution was driven by the same motivation, but once in power Mao refused to allow the USSR to control Chinese policy, leading to a break with Stalin that culminated in a brief war between the two powers.

The demographics situation was further aggravated by Stalin ’ s relocation of some ethnic groups suspected of collaboration with the Axis powers from other parts of the USSR to the Uzbek SSR.

Most defendants were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism.

Some of those suggestions include increasing the size of the Party's Central Committee, giving the State Planning Committee legislative powers and changing the nationalities policy which had been implemented by Stalin.

Relying on the foreign affairs doctrine pursued by the Soviet leadership in the 1920s, in his report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party ( b ) on June 27, 1930, Joseph Stalin welcomed the international destabilization and rise of political extremism among the capitalist powers.

In response to a written German draft four powers agreement, Stalin presented a written counterproposal, including the Soviets joining the four power Axis if Germany foreclosed acting in the Soviet's sphere of influence.

Brezhnev was able to consolidate power to become the leading figure, but he was never able to gather as much powers as Stalin and Khrushchev had done previously.

The secret protocol contained an understanding between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on how to split Central Europe, the Baltic region, and Finland between the two powers.

This new perspective was emphasized by Joseph Stalin, beginning to emerge over the Comintern's Grigory Zinoviev as top leader of the USSR, who in early July 1925 agreed with a reporter for the Tokyo newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun that the revolutionary movement in China, India, Persia, Egypt and " other Eastern countries " were growing and that " the time is drawing near when the Western powers will have to bury themselves in the grave they have dug for themselves in the East.

Following Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin took power in the Communist Party through the office of General Secretary of the Central Commmittee, the leading Secretary of the Secretariat.

The death of Stalin revitalised the Central Committee, and it became an important institution during the power struggle to succeed Stalin.

Trotsky and Rykov tried to reorganise the party in early 1923, by debureaucratising it, however, in this they failed, and Stalin managed to enlarge the Central Committee.

Under Stalin ( pictured ) the Central Committee lost effective control over policymaking.

Stalin managed to liquidate the Central Committee with the committee's own consent, as Molotov once put it " This gradually occured.

Under Khrushchev, an investigation into the matter concluded that the Central Committee had lost its ruling function under Stalin ; from 1929 onwards all decisions in the Central Committee were taken unanimously.

In other words, the Central Committee was too weak to protect itself from Stalin and his hangmen.

Stalin had managed to turn Lenin's hierarchical model on its head ; under Lenin the Party Congress and the Central Committee were the highest decision-making organs, under Stalin the Politburo, Secretariat and the Orgburo became the most important decision-making bodies.

The frequency of Central Committee meetings decreased sharply under Stalin, but increased again following his death.

Khrushchev had began to initiate nepotistic policies, initiated policies without the consent of either the Presidium or the Central Committee, a cult of personality had developed and, in general, Khrushchev had developed several characteristics which he himself criticised Stalin of having at the 20th Party Congress.

Yet, seven years after the Allies ’ Potsdam Agreement to a unified Germany, the USSR via the Stalin Note ( 10 March 1952 ) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies ( US, France, UK ) rejected.

Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the Russian Revolution in 1917, Stalin held the position of General Secretary of the party's Central Committee from 1922 until his death.

In Stalin's last year of life, one of his last major foreign policy initiatives was the 1952 Stalin Note for German reunification and Superpower disengagement from Central Europe, but Britain, France, and the United States viewed this with suspicion and rejected the offer.

In the 1934 Party congress, Kirov was elected to the Central Committee with only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes.

Under Stalin this model was reversed, and it was the General Secretary who determined the composition of the Politburo and Central Committee.

* April 3 – Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

Kamenev and Central Committee members Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov took control of the revived Bolshevik Pravda and moved it to the Right, with Kamenev formulating a policy of conditional support of the newly formed Russian Provisional Government and a reconciliation with the Mensheviks.

Nevertheless, Zinoviev and especially Kamenev helped Stalin retain his position as General Secretary of the Central Committee at the XIIIth Party Congress in May – June 1924 during the first Lenin's Testament controversy.

The struggle became open at the September 1925 meeting of the Central Committee and came to a head at the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925, when Kamenev publicly demanded removal of Stalin from the position of the General Secretary.

Kamenev remained in opposition to Stalin throughout 1926 and 1927, resulting in his expulsion from the Central Committee in October 1927.

" At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make ," Kamenev wrote.